Participants in various sports, including ball sports such as basketball, can improve their performance by training skills such as shooting (e.g. at a net). Without any assistance from other participants, such training can be rendered inefficient by the frequent need to collect balls for further training shots. Current systems intended to aid the collection of balls and their return to the training participant, however, require extensive configuration to operate, and remain inefficient, at least in part due to their lack of operational flexibility.